Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Good Writing

Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Price's Write features tips I have run across or discovered myself through my years of writing and teaching writing. They are offered as suggestions to help you become a better writer. Our explanations will be brief, but I think if you follow these tips you can improve your writing. And more importantly, your audience will notice that improvement.

They say "an" always goes before nouns starting with a vowel and "a" always goes before nous starting with a consonant.

However, this a-or-an rule should be governed by sound, not spelling.

For example, an hour is easier to say and therefore should be written not a hour. The converse holds true for words like united. A united team sounds much better an united team.

So let your ear be your editor when using a and an. If it sounds clunky, change it up.

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A Little About Me and This Page

I'm the creator, curator, chief writer, and publisher of The Write Place, a blog about things involved in the tough, yet rewarding task of writing.

Writing has been an important part of my life for more than 50 years.

In high school, I wrote for the school newspaper and spent 2 years as co-editor of the sports section. It was great, mostly because my off-and-on girlfriend for all 4 years of high school was also on the paper and that fact made for some interesting late night writing sessions.

In college, I wrote dozens of long papers in English classes to get a BA in English at Villanova University. I received the BA even though I once spelled Hemingway as Hemmingway throughout a 30-page paper on Ernest Hemingway.

I spent 10 years writing for 3 newspapers in the South/Jersey Philadelphia area. Today, 1 of those papers has folded, 1 was subsumed by a larger regional paper, and 1 is still publishing, but has closed the news bureau where I worked. I swear Ihad nothing to do with all of them falling on hard times.

For 5 years in the 1970s, I taught News Reporting I and News Reporting II at a New Jersey university. I believe 1 or 2 of the students I taught are actually still working in journalism.

For 20 years, I taught writing to urban students in my old high school. If you want to challenge your writing, editing, and mentoring skills, try that for a while. I used to be a decent speller and really good at proper language command. Not no more.

For 5 years, I was a language arts coach and curriculum designer/writer for the Talent Development Program operating out of Johns Hopkins University.

For 4 years, I was a DC-based educational consultant, advising urban schools and writing blogs about educational issues.

In December of 2015, now retired, my wife and I moved to Atlanta, where I am developing a freelance writing/speaking/consulting practice in between playing with my 2 grandkids, eating great southern food, procrastinating, and vigorously napping.